Dangerous Shiny

I stole the title from blogapotamus rex, who has a very interesting list of shiny things which exert a dangerous fascination for her. I've been thinking about replacing my old Peugeot for ages and here's the likely contender:

I dragged the family to Stony Stratford for a test drive. I admire the calm the sales staff exhibited as my children spent a good hour playing in their shiny new cars while Cathy and I each had a test drive. It's amazing how the mind goes strangely blank about figures when you're thinking how neat it would be to be driving this on a summer's day with the top down....

Mini Pedo

We spent Sunday afternoon in London. Not just London but the City of London. We were participants in the Pedo. To explain: Every year the UHULMC arranges two treasure hunts in the City. One of them, the Miglia Quadrato takes place on the second weekend in May, beginning at midnight on the Saturday and ending at 6:00 on Sunday morning. This is a car treasure hunt confined to the square mile. In October, the Pedo is a similar event but competitors take part on foot. Clues are cryptic and can only be solved by finding some permanent inscription on a building or other part of the cityscape. The Mini Pedo is a subset of the Pedo, designed for families and the less fit among us.

We completed four of the six sections before we had to retire due to a combination of tiredness and running out of clean trousers for tiny boys. We'll be back next year with more clean clothes and stronger legs! 

World Heritage Site

So, the Pontcysyllte aqueduct is set to become a world heritage site. This is ironic when you consider the fact that it is a very popular but relatively isolated part of over 2000 miles of our canal system, now under threat. British Waterways announced 180 job losses among the staff who maintain the network
due to a problem with farm subsidies in DEFRA. A problem not of BW's making which prompted the government to announce a cut in BW's grant partway through the current budget year. Write to your MP! I'm joining the Inland Waterways Association.

The world heritage announcement resulted in a conversation with my colleague Carl about the aqueduct which sent me to my photo archive when I reached home. I crossed the aqueduct in 2003, I think, so there should be physical photos in the box in the loft. I'll post them when I find them. One day I'll get around to scanning them in...

Banbury Canal Day

Banbury had a special canal day today. A festival at Castle Wharf in the centre of Banbury. Lots of boats, market stalls and entertainment for the children. We went to the museum in Banbury as well. The museum has some great interactive displays about the canal and life in Victorian England. The children learned about schoolchildren in the 19th century. We had a chance to wander up and down the towpath in the centre of Banbury, looking at the boats, both private and historic. We saw Scorpio, an ex-BWB motor:

I found more pictures on Flickr of Scorpio at the 2005 Braunston Historic Boat Rally taken by Robert Silverwood.










At the end of the Canal Day, there was a procession which for me brought up slightly sinister associations:
Don't get in the wicker boat, whatever they say!

Committed

I've paid a deposit to our boat fitter to reserve our build slot! Work starts on the fit-out of Syncopation at the beginning of June 2007. This means that the shell will be built beginning in May 2007.

Nature Walk

We went to Rectory Farm in Water Stratford on Sunday afternoon. The weather was wonderfully warm and the walk was entertaining and educational. We walked for about a mile and a half around the farm, seeing the various activities that were being carried out for conservation purposes. There were small patches of crops planted to encourage wildlife (millet, sunflowers) and birds. Crayfish are caught in the river Great Ouse which runs along one side of the farm. These are the Americn Signal crayfish which has displaced the native species in most of our waterways. The walk finished with some pond-dipping where we caught newts, water boatmen and mayfly larvae. Last but not least, we watched three sheep being sheared.

Blofeld Alive and Well

Grannybuttons has spotted Ernst Stavros Blofeld in hiding on a Wyvern Shipping Company narrowboat! Reminds me vaguely of the first narrowboat holiday I spent on Wyvern's Willow in 1978:

This is my Mum, Dad, sister Judi and Aunt Doreen, somewhere near Berkhamstead. I can't for the life of me think why we turned south from Willow Wren's base in Leighton Buzzard rather than north. The scenery would have been more attractive the other way.

No Spitfires

We didn't go to Duxford. It was raining, an hour's drive and cost too much. Instead we went to West Wycombe and Hellfire caves.

The excavation of the caves at West Wycombe were financed by Sir Francis dashwood in the 1750s. The chalk dug out was used to build a road to High Wycombe after a series of harvest failures left many local families destitute. The men of the area were employed by Sir Francis in this manner for several years.
They're great to take children to visit and quite atmospheric. We had tea and cakes in the tea shop afterwards, then a stroll up the hill to see the Dashwood mausoleum and the Golden Ball church.
Whilst there D found a geocache, so we signed the notebook and left a souvenir pen.

Planning the Weekend

To go or not to go? Duxford are holding a Spitfire 70th anniversary airshow next weekend> The price for the whole family will be in excess of £75 for the day. Only half of that will be flying but there's the museum to look around in the morning, if we have the stamina for a long day. It's likely to be a once in a lifetime experience. Should I spend that much on a day out? Decisions, decisions.

Dedication

Ewan was dedicated today at Well Street United Church. Similar to baptism, with the same promises but it leaves the actual baptism up to him to sort out when he's old enough to make his own commitment to God.

As a consequence, we had many family members visiting us. Overnight there were sixteen people sleeping in the house so things were a little cramped. Cathy's three brothers brought their families and Cathy's mum down from Manchester. We have just enough good weather last night for a barbecue and then we watched Serenity.

Rescued a Sheep

We went to Devon to stay with my sister on her partner's farm near Honiton last week. There were several trips to the beach, shopping in Exeter and a visit to my aunt in a retirement home in Honiton itself. She's over ninety and physically quite fit but finding life in the home a little boring so my sister and other relatives nearby visit often. It was my first visit and I was glad I went. She has serious trouble with her short term memory so it was rather confusing because my aunt is unlikely to remember the beginning of a conversation by the time she reaches the end of it.
My nephew aksed me to help him rescue a sheep on Thursday. The unfortunate creature had escaped into a field adjacent to the one it
should have been in and was stuck in a patch of boggy ground. Sheep hooves are rubbish for crossing muddy ground! It had sunk up to it's armpits in mud and couldn't get free. When we arrived it was exhausted with struggling to reach firm ground the mud under it was at blood temperature. We managed to lift it to firm ground but it wouldn't or couldn't stand up, so we left it to rest and went back to the farm house to phone the farmer who owned it. The next morning we were on our way out and saw many more sheep in field and - you've guessed it! - another sheep stuck in the same patch of mud. It might even have been the same sheep again.

Congratulations Teresa and Jack

We went to see Teresa get married to Jack on Friday. It was a posh "do" at Arley Hall. We had a wonderful time in the beautiful surroundings of the home of the Viscountess and Viscount Ashbrook.

Home Again

We got back from La Rochelle the day before yesterday after one of the most eventful weeks ever.

S's passport didn't arrive until Tuesday last week so she had to stay home with Cathy until it arrived. I went ahead on Saturday to our rented home for the week, Villa Souka. We went by air and had an uneventful trip, having had the TV and immersion heater damaged by a near lightning strike at home on Saturday morning before we left.

Later in the day two bedrooms were flooded by another thunderstorm via our Velux windows which I had left open. The girls were at Mead Open Farm.

We went to the Ile de Re on Sunday to see the Phare des Baleines and go to the beach.

On Monday we went to the Aquarium and on Tuesday we went to the Maritime Museum.

The cost of Mobile phone roaming in Europe is criminal. I burned £30 of credit in two days in about 30 minutes of calls and you can only top up your phone via Vodaphone in the UK. This meant that Cathy couldn't reach me when the passport arrived to tell me when she and S would arrive. I couldn't call until Tuesday morning: there are no French payphones that take coins any more, you have to buy an international card from a tabac. I finally thought to call the friend who gave the girls a lift to the station when I got no reply at home or from Cathy's mobile. Then I had to try to remember how long the train journey was via Eurostar and TGV to deduce their probable time of arrival.

On Wednesday Ewan was ill. I took S and D to the beach and the Museum of Automata and the nearby Model Museum.

On thursday we went to Planete Futuroscope. And Cathy and I were ill that night. On Friday S was ill and I took D to the beach. On Saturday we came home.

Early Sketchup Efforts

I've been learning sketchup in an effort to visualise the narrowboat to be. Here are my efforts so far:

This is a work in progress but it has already allowed me to even better visualise my design than before. Well done Google for this excellent entry level CAD package!

All For Charity

We went to the Puzzle Pre-School Charity ball this week. It was held at Pendley Manor Hotel, a rather lovely four star hotel in Tring at the edge of the Chilterns. The Manor is set in 26 acres of parkland with dozens of peacocks in residence. We stayed overnight on Saturday after the ball, having parked the children at a very kind friend's for the duration. It was only when I was leaving that I realised the hotel grounds actually border on the Grand Union canal! Here's a map. Curses! I missed a perfect chance to indulge in a little gongoozling.

Pitt Rivers Museum

Ever since my time at Oxford, I've loved the Pitt Rivers museum. It's an anthropological museum which strongly resembles an attic. It's at the back of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. There's an unassuming (on the scale of the museum of natural history, anyway) door at the back of the main hall. Once through this, you find yourself in a large dimly lit room filled to bursting with large glass cases. There's only just enough room between the cases to fit one person. There are large exhibits (dugout canoes etc.) suspended above the cases. Items are classified under eccentric headings. There's a case full of fire-making implements, another filled with guns. There's even a case displaying what humans do to their enemies' heads. The whole place has the atmosphere of a huge Victorian attic. It's just wonderful. The museum is having an extension built at the moment which will more than double it's capacity. I just hope it manages to retain it's present atmosphere where every corner turned (and there are so many corners) reveals more treasures and unexpected discoveries.

Learning Sketchup

I've created my first sketchup drawing! My first attempt at designing a new mezzanine floor for our front bedroom. The bedroom has a fifteen foot ceiling, so it's begging to have something in that space. I reckon I can fit a platform big enough for a double bed in there. Sketchup has allowed my to prove that. Next, I'll think about tackling a narrowboat design. I've already produced two 2D plans of our proposed narrowboat in OpenOffice Draw. There are still some issues in my design : the fore deck and well deck are about four feet too short. Seating in the saloon is taking up an inordinate amount of space. I think moving to sketchup may be the answer. The problem is that having once gone 3D there may be no way to produce a 2D plan. I'd also like to transfer data from one application to the other. Oh well, only more experimentation will show what can be done.

Recursion

I'm reading a book called Recursion at the moment and I thought I would post something about it, but I found the Hasselhoffian Recursion instead. Aaaargh!

Show and Tell

S had show and tell at school yesterday. We couldn't find her baby book, so we sent her in with this. It's a panel about 3 feet by 4 feet, made for queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. The queen'd head is about four inches high. Made of three pieces of thin printed cotton stitched together. It's amazing that it has survived so long. We found it in a cupboard when we bought the chapel. 

Medieval Jousting

Wow! We saw a roadside avertisement near home and went to the Medieval Jousting Fayre put on by the Devils Horsemen at Wychwood stud. We were treated to a spectacular display of stunt riding and chivalry. Gerard Naprous and his team put on a great show. We cheered all the knights except for the villainous black knight (Gerard), whom we boo-ed and hissed. At the end he was, of course, vanquished and met an end fitting to his villainy.










In addition we saw some of the Gerard's huge collection of coaches and were able to look around the stables and see all their horses. There were activites like a climbing wall, archery demonstrations and a chance to ride in a period coach.

I had not realised the Devil's Horsemen were based so near to our home. I've even seen them filling their lorry up at a local filling station, complete with trailer carrying western stagecoach.